Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist is a contemporary artist, best known for her experimental video and installation art. Her creations have been described as surreal, intimate, abstract, and often categorized as feminist art. She often performs in her own video productions, and much of her art features self portraits of some kind.

Installation view of Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor, September 12, 2021–June 6, 2022 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

Rist has had works commissioned by the New York Public Art Fund, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Pipilotti Rist has had art exhibited since 1984, and shown work at Kunstverein in Hamburg, Germany (1995); Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1996); SITE Santa Fe (1998); Montréal Museum of Fine Arts (2000); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (2001); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2004); Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2007); Museum of Modern Art in New York (2008); Venice Biennale (1993, 1999, and 2005); São Paulo Biennial (1995); Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, France (1997); Berlin Biennial (1998); International Biennial Exhibition at SITE Santa Fe (1999); Sydney Biennial (2000); International Triennial of Contemporary Art, Yokohama (2001); and more.

More recent exhibits include New Museum (2016), New York; Museum of Fine Arts (2017), Houston; and Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2019). Her current exhibition Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor is at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, in Las Angeles. (September 2021 - June 2022)

The following are some of her video installation pieces:

I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986)

Pickelporno (1992)

Selfless in a Bath of Lava (1994)

Flying Room (1995)

Ever is Over All (1997)

Atmosphere & Instinct (1998)

Himalaya’s Sister’s Living Room (2000)

Open My Glade (2000)

Stir Heart, Rinse Heart (2003)

A la belle étoile, "Under The Stars" (2007)

Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters) (2008)

Pixel Forest (2016)

Pipilotti Rist was born on June 21, 1962 in Garbs, Switzerland. Her name was originally Elisabeth Charlotte Rist; her self-given name is inspired by her nickname and the storybook character Pippi Longstocking. She studied art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1982 to 1986 and the Basel School of Design from 1986 to 1988. During her studies, she began focusing on video and installation art, though she also experimented with animated cartoons and scenery for pop music concerts. She produced her first video, I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much, in 1986.In addition to visual art, Pipilotti Rist is also a musician, playing both bass and drums in Les Reines Prochaines, or The Next Queens, from 1988 to 1994.In 1997, she was the recipient of a Premio 2000 award for the video Ever Is Over All (1997), which features a woman smashing car windows with a larger flower. Rist was a visiting professor at UCLA, Los Angeles CA, 2002 – 2003.